"Okay, I've had an opinion change I'd like to announce. I'm betting that the future of mobility will be Linux, and not Symbian, Windows or anything else. This is quite a change from my previous pro-Symbian stances, but I've been sort of leaning this way for a while - or rather, leaning away from Symbian as it fails to live up to its potential - and now I've finally come to a religious change of faith when it comes to mobile OSes."

It think that this individual too easily dismisses MS. There are major manufacturers like HP with the iPAQ h6315 and hw6515, Samsung with the SCH-i730, Motorola with the MPx220 all making MS Windows Mobile based SmartPhone devices. Apps are relatively easily to develop, and already developed Windows apps are quite portable, to these devices using the MS developer tools used and known by great numbers of developers. These phones support Exchange/Outlook for communication/contacts/caldendar syncronization with corporate enviornments, MSN and AOL IM, Windows Media DRM files playback and streaming, IE for web browsing, Pocket Word and Excel and Powerpoint for viewing/editing those documents/attachments, MS and Adobe e-Books, etc etc all with a familiar interface. This will be quite a compeling platform for all kinds of information browsing and synchronization tasks users will want to do with a smartphone.

On another note I think that the huge advance for SmartPhones will come with 802.11b and VOIP. Basically imagine a phone that works like a cell phone when out of the range of your wireless network or hotspot but works like a cheap VOIP phone, ala Vonage, with amazing 20 feet away reception when in range of your office/home access point. It will replace the phone on everyone's desk in the office because one of the things holding back cell phones from being our only work phone is service cost and reception - both of which that solves. It also allows cheap and fast data access for all the afore-mentioned apps when in the office/home wireless network as well as pretty fast data access when on the road via 3G cell data service. I would definetly snap one up in a hearbeat and it would be the market dominator overnight. I expect MS to beat others to the market as the software is not only under development but just about there with WindowsMobile based PDAs/SmartPhones today.

Everything else could be perfect, but sole-source vendor lockin wipes it all out. Cell phone companies are masters at lockin, they understand how to play that game, and they are not going to do it to themselves.

The technology doesn't need to be the best, it just needs to be good enough. Technology is only only one small part of the total business decision.

I thought that the article did a good job of showing how software development costs and developer mindshare are hurting Symbian. Microsoft does better than Symbian on both the costs and mindshare. Linux offers still lower costs: no royalties, free tools. Mindshare may be a wash; both have very large pools of developers to draw on.

The comments by the Symbian fan about the greater processor and memory requirements of the alternatives misses the point. I will gladly bet that hardware costs will come down faster than software development costs. Symbian's window of opportunity is closing.

I agree dont cut out Microsoft yet. The reason everyone trashes Microsoft because they are the "enemy" (how sad) i mean come on even Jobs is not afraid to link arms will Gates every so oftern.

There is no "one pefect system" i think you will find for next few years diversities yet its all about inter-linking with one another and connectivity no matter what your platform.

has someone else mentioned it WONT be "oh its linux" that will sell a device it will be ease of use and stability. It dont matter if its Linux, BSD, Windows or or anything as long as it ease of use thats all that matters. I have used Windows Mobile for a while in the past. As soon as MS iron out those annoying pesky bugs and revamp key areas of the system they will be onto a winner. I mean come on who says its gonna stay at windows mobile? What about a fully feature OS on your portable device?

Sure give the average punter whatevermobileOS for basic stuff, and sure make these brilliant and great to completment their OS. But dont rule out say a Windows Vista on small device that is bigger than a pda but small enough to carry around. Didnt Mr Gates show off a prototype ages ago at a conference. Its a few years away but its coming.

LEENOOOZ is not necessarily best in what counts k most in small-footprint devizes: battery autonomy.A general-purpose OS has lotz of processes running in bgrund so they konsume many Wattts .
For mobile phones and PDAs we need specialized operating systems, at least until energy storage technologies are up to par.

Heyy moronz!! Its not justd softwr, but also hardwaree. Contrarilye to wat u mai thinc , hardware is ages behind what is should be for all teee software dereams. Whethre it isz beeos n or palmoxs or windowssosz, the lašk ov a godd hardware platforam and a good sotftware pwerr konsumpshun paradigm makesz moot all thos e choicess.,

Remember taht: each cahnge from 1 to 0 or 0 to 1 means MORE WATTTS. And heavy multittaskingds genrrall purpose sofwer only makz more 0->1 & 1->0 changes..!!.

I only write like this in OsNews from now on because my posts are always misclassified as Score=-1. So I hope that posing as a dyslexic person will earn me more compassion from the moderators.

For example, this post (not written by me) was classified as -1: not only mobility
By Anonymous (IP: 201.129.165.---) on 2005-09-06 14:34:14 UTC
The future of Servers , desktops ,appilances, mobility
IS LINUX

The FUTURE is Linux everywhere

Why???????? Of course it is not very informative by itself, but come on! Do you (YES, YOU!!!) want to have a neutered forum with no deviating opinions?

There are certainly a few points in this article, but there is also quite a few left out. This whole crap about "Linux being free" is hardly what SonyEricsson nor Nokia is concerned about. If they're wise they're concerned about delivering quality and profit from it. Surely Symbian is not the best choice (Me personally prefer PalmOS anyday).

Being a bit realistic though, if free is what it's all about, I think Nokia rather go the MS way. there they can find huge support, a whole bunch of useful application and better integration with the desktop.

I think Symbian will live on for quite some time still, and later on I guess we'll see more diversity (Which I'm also hoping on). Many small players might pop up doing the Linux thing, just like some has gone with Windows... some develop their own stuff (HipTop anyone?) and some go for Palm. Geee I bet even some might head for an act like Haiku or QNX.

What bothers me is that this is vague speculation where someone is trying to guess what Nokia is thinking, and I for one hardly think this technician guy has a clue what happens up in the board of Nokia.

There are certainly a few points in this article, but there is also quite a few left out. This whole crap about "Linux being free" is hardly what SonyEricsson nor Nokia is concerned about. If they're wise they're concerned about delivering quality and profit from it. Surely Symbian is not the best choice (Me personally prefer PalmOS anyday).

These are hardware manufacturers. They care about 2 things;

* Per unit costs.

* Compelling features.

This is because they want margins as high as possible.

This is the same group that is worried about being able to sell sub $10 cell phones in some parts of the world. You can bet that software licence and development costs matter.

Both Motorola and Nokia, btw, have Linux phones now. The target isn't just on costs, but features; these devices have storage to do video, have MP3 support, and have PDA-style features built in.

Will Linux win every time? Nope. The ipod phones that are comming out are one example of features winning over licence fees. Expect Linux to be used frequently, though not to the exclusion of all others. That just won't happen.

Really, I made a test and OsNEWS didn't pass the test. F*** OsNEWS. All posts slightly offtopic are banned. I have never seen such a moronic criterion for banning than in OsNEWS. From now on, OsNEWS has lost a valuable contributor. No longer will you be able to count with my insights and lively participation. Goobye OsNEWS morons, see you no more...

One of the things that people, when writing these articles, seem to forget is that Linux doesn't really provide the majority of what will power a mobile OS - or computer for that matter. It is a kernel and nothing more. That's not to knock it, but it does mean that you need other tools to run the rest of the system.

I'm sure that the author is thinking about the GNU software. This software runs on a number of kernels. The Linux kernel is the most desktop-mature to an extent (it has great x86 support and lots of drivers for it). Of course, I don't think my next phone is going to contain an x86 - or any other desktop processor. This is what makes me question why Linux is so great for this purpose. You aren't using Linux's strength - desktop hardware support - but you are dealing with Linux's caveat - that it isn't as portable as, say, NetBSD.

In fact, NetBSD makes a ton more sense than Linux on the mobile platform. NetBSD is easily ported to new processor architectures which prevents hardware lockin and since you control the hardware, it doesn't matter if it has the most number of drivers, you just need to write the drivers for your hardware - something you'd probably have to do with Linux anyway. Plus, with NetBSD, you don't have to contribute back which means that Nokia doesn't have to share its code with SonyEricsson. You might think that's a downside to it, but I think it's safe to say that companies prefer to keep these things closed.

Linux is perceived to be the most compact, portable OS out there whether it is or not, and arguably has enough existing developer tools for the embedded market to make it popular.

Toasters aside, it's going to take a LOT of visible BSD port projects to steal that thunder, and like it or not, a heavier focus on proof of concept as a desktop OS (starting with LiveCDs that detect and configure X). What sold OS X, "BSD" or ease of use? (conversely, when Apple chose NeXT over BeOS, was processor portability their chief concern?)

I honestly don't know enough about what's under the respective hoods of GNU/Linux and BSD to say which is better. But until BSD geeks are as devoted to proving it runs comfortably on routers, iPods, iPAQs, X-Boxen, and the like, Linux is going to be the darling, at least until it fails spectacularly at something that BSD excels in.

What the guys says is absolutely true. I already rely on a Linux-driven mobile device and just found out that my new wifi phone is based on Linux as well. And, of course, I need to get one of those awesome NOKIA Internet Tablets which makes three Linux-driven gadgets right there. Oh, and my notebook is going to run Linux as well.

* have a sort of common language so that 3rd parties developpers can easily port their sw.
Today it is a pain on low cost hw as they use non posix operating system, it means one custom job for each customer and it takes huge amount of time to integrate and test. This is the most important part. It takes forever to port a huge application such as a browser.
If someone comes to you with a nice application and it runs on linux, porting it to a mobile phone running linux is relatively easy.

* do not depend on a specific corporation. Symbian = more or less nokia which is also a phone manufacturer.
You don't want to rely on your competitor for vital components.
Microsoft is microsoft. Lots of people don't want to depend on an american monopolist. Furthermore miscrosoft business model is more or less you add some tiny stuff and do the manufacturing, nothing else
(even if it has changed lately, to be more open)
Price is also an issue.

But the picture is not complete.
Linux is just the operating system.
You need a framework to put all the other applications on top of it.
Will it be Qtopia, gtk, palm, the question is open.
But the operating system is only a part of the big picture.

"All other things being equal, I would buy a device because it ran linux. The hackability factor is much better."

I agree but what i meant is the average consumer does not give a monkeys. As long as its cool, trendy looks nice and does wonders that will sell. The other key factor we are all missing is its not the full picture if its linux. The brand be it "nokia" or "Motorola" etc will prob more likely sell the device than the name Linux. I know its hard to imagine but where i live most people have not heard of Linux or no what it is...! Say its a Nokia though, thats a different story...

One of the developers of Nokia 770 was talking about puting python in it. Nokia already has a python for symbian, but this one is going to use PyGTK as a widget kit, just put sqllite, openssl, ellementtree and some networking code (twisted?) and you have the framework. Maybe then you don't even need a emulator, just run a well configured nested x and you can develop software on your computer. This would be great.

I just had an Qtek S100 with MS Mobile 2003 SE, i thought it was the perfect phone. But when I used that phone for a while I missed soon my old Nokia. The problem is that you can do almost anything with the phone but non of the tasks is perfect, for example calling with the phone is a crime. I think the softkeyboards are gone in a year. So MS must walk a long way, the interface looks like a pc desktop but on my phone I don't want that.
I think when Apple comes with a phone they think, what do people want to do with the phone,what find they important. They do not think the phone interface must look like a Tiger interface. The Ipod also has no Tiger interface that thing is good in what it must do, not more not less.